Crash into Me (Heart of Stone #1)(64)
Author: K.M. Scott

The last envelope in the pile sat waiting for me. I picked it up and examined it, noticing it had the same handwritten address and post office mark on the front of the envelope, but it had been mailed only the day before. At least the mailman hadn’t put this one through the wringer. Tearing it open, I unfolded the letter inside and began reading.

The words swam in front of my eyes. Your father. They got away with murder. Ask Tristan. He knows who’s responsible. My hands began to tremble violently, and I threw the paper away from me. Shaking my head in disbelief, I struggled to hold back the tears.

It wasn’t possible. There was no way Tristan was involved in my father’s murder. He couldn’t be. He didn’t even know him.

As I repeated those words again and again in my head, I realized I couldn’t be sure he hadn’t known him. I knew very little about Tristan before just a few months ago. What if the person who’d written this letter was right?

My head felt like it was beginning to spin, like everything around me was spiraling out of control. My mind raced to find any sign that the accusation made in the letter was correct. Every word he’d said suddenly became suspect, every action confirmation of his guilt.

My stomach tied itself into knots as every moment we’d spent together played out in my mind. Why had he wanted someone like me in the first place? Why had he pushed for me to live here with him? Did the phone calls he’d begun receiving right around the time I should have received the first letter have anything to do with this? I didn’t want to believe I was in danger, but for the first time since I’d met Tristan, I was truly frightened.

"Where were we?"

I looked up and saw him standing in the doorway, a look of concern of his face like he always had after taking one of those phone calls. But now he looked different. Foreign.

"Nina, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost."

Staring at the letter that lay near the edge of the bed, I reached over and picked it up. "Tell me you had nothing to do with my father’s death. Tell me whoever wrote this letter is simply being cruel."

Tristan’s face grew ashen as he stood staring at me, his eyes wide. "What are you talking about?"

"This letter. Someone says you know who killed my father. Do you?" My voice cracked as I pleaded for his answer.

He walked toward me and tried to take the letter from my hand. "What are you saying?"

Jumping to my feet, I pulled the letter from his hold and pressed it close to my chest. "Do you know who killed my father? Tell me!"

"Nina, calm down. Let me see the letter."

I backed away from him, shaking my head. "No! Just answer the fucking question! Do you know anything about who murdered my father?"

His silence was deafening as he remained staring at me, hurt filling his eyes.

"Oh, my God! You do!" I cried. "How could you? Get away from me!"

He followed me and gently touched my arm. "Nina, it’s not what you think. Calm down and take a seat."

Pushing his hand away, I screamed, "I will not calm down! Tell me what you know! Who killed my father?"

"Please sit down. I promise you I had nothing to do with your father’s death."

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I let him lead me over to the bed. I wanted so much to believe he hadn’t been a part of taking my father away from me. Tristan was the man of my dreams and now it seemed like everything we’d had was tainted by this one letter.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and watched him kneel down in front of me, just like he had days earlier when he’d made me the happiest woman in the world. He looked up at me with those brown eyes that spoke volumes even before the first world left his mouth.

He knew. He knew who’d killed my father.

Holding my hands in his, he brought them to his mouth in a kiss. Quietly, he said, "Nina, I never met your father. I need you to believe me. I didn’t harm your father."

"Why did the person who wrote that letter say you’d know?" I asked, praying to hear that he knew nothing about my father’s murder.

"I need you to understand. Until my father and brother died in that plane crash, I wasn’t part of the business. I hadn’t found what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want to run hotels or anything else they did. I was your typical wealthy kid in his mid-twenties drinking and jamming whatever I could up my nose. I’m not proud of that, but I need you to know I wasn’t part of what went on with them."

The man on the floor in front of me seemed so strange now. I’d never known anything about him like that. "Tristan, I need to know what this is all about."

He squeezed my hands and continued in a shaky voice. "When my father and brother died, I was thrust into everything with the business. I had to be that person I’d never wanted to be on top of learning how to run all the businesses, particularly the Richmonts. I had no idea what either of them had done. For months, I found out things about my father and Taylor that I’d never imagined they could do. Then one day I began sifting through documents related to a real estate deal my father and brother had been involved in." He stopped a moment and then said, "I didn’t know why, but your father’s name was on one of the documents."

Documents? "Why would my father’s name be anywhere in papers of your father’s?"

Tristan began to speak but his voice cracked and he stopped. "I didn’t know. Then when I began digging, I found a slush fund my father used to pay for things he didn’t want some on the board to know about. It wasn’t until I dug into the money he spent there that I found out why your father would be involved in anything with my family’s company. I swear I wasn’t involved in what my father did."

"No, don’t tell me your father was part of why my father died. Please don’t say that."

"I’m so sorry, Nina. He must have been investigating a real estate deal and my father…" He couldn’t finish his sentence, so I did.

With a sob, I said the words that broke my heart. "Your father had my father killed because he was getting too close to something he was doing."

Tristan buried his face in my lap and pleaded, "I swear I didn’t know. I wasn’t part of the business then. If I was, I wouldn’t have let that happen. I couldn’t get your father’s death out of my mind. I wanted to do something to try to make up for what had happened."

I looked down at his head in my lap and realized what he was saying. "It wasn’t a coincidence that we met, was it?"

He said nothing but lifted his head to look up at me, and I knew the answer. "No. I was sickened by what my father had done. I needed to do something, so I researched everything about your father and found out about you and your sister. I knew you lived right in Brooklyn and found out you worked at a gallery in SoHo. I just needed to try to fix what had been done, to see if I could help any."